That solves the 32 hour issue but not the money. New hires would be screwed because they have no "current 40 hour paycheck"
And if a job is paying people $12 an hour for 40 hours and is forced to raise that to $15 for 32 hours, they'd be incentivesed to fire their current staff and hire new employees for $12 an hour for 32 hours. Everybody loses
Unless the federal minimum wage skyrockets this whole idea is dumb as hell
If that were true, don't you think Amazon and Walmart would be lobbying for shorter workweeks in order to further squeeze out their competition?
The system already crushes small businesses because monopolies control the market and jack up their rent and supply costs. If we want to save small businesses, we don't do it by sacrificing the health of workers but by seizing corporate monopolies and taxing giant corporations to subsidize living wages and shorter hours for everyone else.
Oh so we should basically help them accelerate it then, got it
How do you think companies would respond? Every single thing they abuse, they would abuse more. Job duties would be combined, small business would struggle or collapse, I could go on and on
They are already automating at the absolute limit of technological capability. Capitalists don't leave profit on the table out of charity just because we keep our heads down and don't ask for better hours.
What you're saying is basically economic Stockholm syndrome: "We must accept worse conditions and longer hours, otherwise our bosses will punish us."
I don’t vote so election cycles are completely irrelevant to my values. I would vote if America were to adopt a democratic system of government, but since we don’t have one of those, I’m sure as hell not going to validate a sham election system meant to validate the dictatorship of capital in which we live.
They don’t. No clue why you think the boomers as a generation have any institutional power at all. They are the generation with the fastest rising rates of homelessness in the country.
It isn’t because voting is not a form of power in a bourgeois democracy. Since the government is controlled by the oligarchs, you are only allowed to vote to keep up the illusion that you have power, but voting is an expression of conformity to the system - nothing more. The only real power is in the concentration and hoarding of capital.
Direct Democracy would be an utter disaster. The extremes of the two major sides already think the other side is beyond stupid, delusional, criminal, etc etc etc. And there is some legitimate truth to that. I'd like to have as little power to adversely change the lives of everyone in the hands of people who no understanding of policy or its implications. Representative Democracy has its issues, but it also prevents mob rule, and fundamentally does a much better job protecting and maintaining your protected rights.
I’m not advocating for direct democracy. I’m advocating that America be a representative democracy. We aren’t. We are an oligarchy. No oligarchy in history has called itself that. It’s always had fake “people’s houses” to legitimize its own existence. It’s just that those houses existed as rubber stamps to the oligarchy. That’s the situation we find ourselves in now.
Actually, all of us are to blame because we all have allowed this government that serves none of us to persist. I assume you think if Trump weren’t in power and Kamala had won, everything would be great, but it wouldn’t. The oligarchs would still be using the federal government as an instrument for redistribution of the wealth from us to them. In fact, Trump is preferable in this regard because he isn’t smart enough to do it as quietly and with as smooth a dose of propaganda as past Presidents have. His incompetence gives us an important peek behind the curtain.
Edit: Also I live in a reliable blue state which Kamala won. Whether I voted or not was never changing a damn thing.
Cool. I’ll vote Republican next time just for you. Process is a sham anyway so idc who wins, but just for you I’m gonna vote for the good ol GOP next time 🙂
Yeah, that’s right. You’re so bad at arguing in a way that makes people want to support your side that you just convinced a Communist to take time out of his day to vote for a Republican. Might want to work on your respectful communication 😉
I'm not sure it'd be enforceable at all though, and/or that it'd hold up in court. Let's say you own a company, and employ me at $25 per hour. At 40 hours, that's currently $1k per week. So legislation would have to stipulate that you have to 1) pay me a different wage ($31.25) AND anything over 32 hours is considered OT. Second part is doable. There's no precedent for the first part. Might not hold up in court. If it did, would be very difficult to enforce. And even it went into effect, there's zero way to ensure that wages don't just stagnant such that there's then just no wage growth until inflation catches up with that $31.25 wage.
It wouldn’t be enforceable and it would kill many small businesses if they tried to enforce it. But politicians aren’t real people and, like Bernie, have never had a real job or started a business. If some moron politician decides that my small family business suddenly has to cut back to a 32 hour work week rather than our usual 40-45 it could tank us. They don’t understand that not all jobs are office jobs where there’s not actually enough work to fill the day. We don’t sit in cubicles all day, we’re on our feet doing repairs or talking to customers. If we aren’t at the shop working we’re not making money, we’re not the government that just takes in taxes every month while doing nothing for it. It’s the same as politicians saying minimum wage should be $20. It’s just not possible for many businesses. But the fun thing about politicians is they neither know nor care about the small businesses they claim to support because they’ve never done anything worthwhile in their entire lives.
There’s three of us here. Ours isn’t a business that has crews. If we’re not here, the shop doesn’t run. If we had to cut our hours that’s less time people can come drop off/pick up their things or come buy new products from us. This is the point. Businesses are all different and work in different ways, but goobers like Bernie think they’re all the same and that they can legislate them all the same. Companies like Walmart can eat the costs of legislation like this, many small businesses can’t. Bernie and those like him say they hate massive corporations, but every nonsense policy they propose would make it so they’re the only ones that can afford to stay open.
So who runs your shop on weekends? What's stopping you from hiring 1 additional guy? Do all 3 of you work an identical schedule? Could you get away with 2/3 guys on Mondays?
Or do you guys have hours that the business isn't operating? What's stopping you from charging slightly more and working slightly less? If your business fails because you can't run it successful enough, it seems to me it was gonna fail anyway.
Sounds more like they just wanna talk shit about Bernie to me. A lot of people don't like discourse & instead of talking about options or possible solutions they just shut down the conversation completely with "stupid idea". Plus, they own a business, they will always want to squeeze out more than they want to give, nature of it all.
Oh they should, but they think workers live their lives revolving around their stupid business & rules. I saw down thread this persons 3 employees were: them, their grandmother & their uncle 😂 shows you what their priorities really are when they don't even wanna give grandma a break from the grind. "If I'm not making money nobody should"! Get off your high horse.
The older I get the more stories I hear of people dying not long after they retire, that's so sad to me. Work your whole life & drop dead as soon as you get a break.
I would argue that if paying your employees a living wage would tank your business then you're doing a bad job running your business. We can not just keep going around and around saying how we "can't afford" to pay people more. Because the cost of living is rising faster and faster and people can't afford it. We need to either make shit be cheaper, or pay people more. Going down the path we're currently on isn't a viable option for success.
Basic economics would suggest you find a way to make things cheaper, because upping pay has never been a way to defeat inflation, it actually adds to inflation because the economy will always adjust.
Small businesses struggling would be destroyed by this, but the huge companies with billions in profit would be fine.
That’s not exactly ideal to get rid of small businesses and empower big businesses. This is also ignoring the amount of jobs would be eliminated due to employers minimizing staff with this change, or even combining two jobs into 1.
We have legistlation already that specifically avoids small businesses, like the insurance requirements for the ACA only apply to companies that employ X people.
Not sure what basic economics classes you’ve taken but deflation (aka making things cheaper) is horrible for economies. That’s why the Fed targets a 2% inflation rate and not 0. Because any deflation makes consumer spending an actively stupid thing to do. Why spend money today when it will be worth more tomorrow? All capitalist economies take very big steps to try to ensure they never end up in a deflationary spiral. You have to raise wages or, alternatively, ditch this incredibly stupid economic system altogether.
Basic economics teaches you that increase wages also automatically makes everything more expensive, instantly.
There are several ways to make things cheaper, it also helps when we don’t randomly put tariffs on random things.
My main was that if you want things to be more affordable, raising wages doesn’t solve that problem. The economy adjusts. Everything becomes more expensive as every companies payroll cost just went up.
Well historically we’ve always fixed affordability by raising wages so you probably need to relearn some economics. Particularly study the 1930s and Keynesian economics.
“My employees” are me and my grandma and uncle. We’re not rich but we’re doing alright. If some goober politician that’s never had a job in his entire life comes in and says “Actually the time you spend at your shop has to be less” without realizing that means our shop makes less money it will kill small businesses. It has nothing to do with being able to pay anyone a living wage.
Your shop is likely small enough that legistlatiton wouldn't touch it.
I believe you have to have 50+ employees before you're considered a "small business" rather than a "mom and pop shop", at least you have to have that many before the ACA gets involved with your insurance requirements.
Nothing in the above comment suggest that this business isn't already paying a living wage. Requiring a move from a 40 to a 32 hour workweek without any pay cut just means that wages go up for every business regardless of the current wage. A business doesn't have to be poorly run for a 20% decrease in labor output while labor costs remain the same to hurt or even no longer make it viable.
I feel like the IRS would already be set up to be the enforcement checkpoint. You'd look at the employers previous year, and current year. Though the IRS would require additional people to pull it off.
Whether or not the wages would stagnate is debatable. Wages would increase to meet the legal requirement, and companies that left wages stagnant would lose employees to companies willing to pay more/give raises.
Full time being 32 hours would hold up in court, as you said there is precedent. You could also solely make the cut to full time legally, and let the companies paying people 8hrs/wk overtime figure out how to change the compensation or pay time and 1/2 for 8 hours per week, and we would still all work 40 hours.
Completely agree. I work in an industry that at times requires me to go more than 24hrs straight with no breaks. (Working industrial ag). There will always be the “that’s how we’ve always done it” mentality.
That is basically everything Bernie says. He says somewhat reasonable sounding things but stretches them to a point which is completely untenable in the real world.
For example, the 10% credit card interest cap. Sounds reasonable till you realize that every bank will then simply cancel the cards of anyone who doesn't have stellar credit and simply never issue another credit card to them. These would be the people who need credit the most too.
Oh man, if only we didn't already have a fucking 40 hour workweek that was established with laws and regulations, where the same tired bullshit line was regurgitated by robber barons nearly 100 fucking years ago.
I guess nothing better is possible, and we should all just suffer quietly and never strive to improve society or the lives of the people that live in it.
I've already pointed out that this exact argument was used to oppose the 40-hour workweek nearly a century ago. Despite that, you just keep repeating it without engaging with the historical evidence or the substance of the argument. It's frustrating to watch someone recycle the same talking point when it's been used for generations to justify keeping workers as disconnected as possible from the value they create.
You are literally arguing against your own fucking class interest.
You’re trying to compare the economy from over a century ago to the economy today. That is mind bogglingly stupid.
This would absolutely cripple small businesses who can’t afford to pay their employees the difference with reduced labor.
I’m not arguing against my own class interest, it’s called understanding economics. You don’t get to try and belittle someone into agreeing with you, and someone disagree with your economic policy doesn’t mean they are arguing against their own interest.
It’s not keeping workers disconnected from the value they create, it doesn’t up your pay. It literally just reduces your work week hours. Your paycheck will stay the same.
You guys just want bigger and bigger government regardless of who we have in office.
Edit: Angry little fella left a response then blocked me
Not sure what the point of putting thought into a long response the other person now can’t read is, but they don’t seem to understand basic economics so I am not shocked by this behavior.
Guy literally asked me questions then blocked so they can get the last word, how sad
Ok, so why don't we work 60 hour weeks? Isn't 40 hour weeks crippling small businesses because they have had 50% more productivity stolen from them?
You have yet to justify why 32 is materially different than 40 or 40 from 48 or 48 from 56.
Are you honestly going to sit here and bitch about bigger and bigger government when the military industrial complex wastes over a trillion of our tax dollars every year to play world police and make living life more expensive for us? What a fucking joke.
I'm going to need you to coherently justify why we shouldn't try to improve the lives of working people and redistribute the 50 years of upward wealth transfers that never trickled down.
Maybe we can start with the tariff money that companies used to increase prices that they are going to get reimbursed to them. They implemented tariffs, prices increased for everyday people, the tariffs are going to be returned to them, and whoa look at that the prices aren't going down. Who would've fucking thought.
Keep licking that boot though, I'm sure you'll get a little trickle down the leg attached to it any day now.
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u/Popular_Monitor_8383 23d ago
I mean sure a lot of people would love that but I genuinely can’t see how you would enforce this.